SUI

How cell suicide protects plants from infection

Researchers at Yale have identified a gene that regulates the major immune response in plants, programmed cell death (PCD), according to a recent report in the journal Cell. To protect themselves from viruses, plants create a zone of dead cells around an infection site that prevents the infection from spreading. Savithramma Dinesh-Kumar, associate professor of Molecular, Cellular and Deve...

DNA technique measures suitability of soil for onion crops

Nematodes, such as the stem nematode, and fungi, such as white rot, are particularly harmful for onion crops in the Netherlands: they cause rot. Soil samples are investigated to detect this; a labour-intensive and expensive operation. Together with the Laboratory for Nematology (University of Wageningen) the company Blgg has developed a molecular technique to detect the stem nematode and white ro...

Suicide risk does not increase when adults start using antidepressants, study finds

The risk of serious suicide attempts or death by suicide generally decreases in the weeks after patients start taking antidepressant medication, according to a new study led by Group Health Cooperative researchers and published in the January issue of The American Journal of Psychiatry. The study also found that the risk of suicidal behavior after starting 10 newer antidepressant medications is l...

University of Minnesota researchers take new look at cellular suicide

Like a bodyguard turned traitor, a protein whose regular job is to help repair severed DNA molecules will, in some cases, join forces with another protein to do the opposite and chop the DNA to bits, according to new research at the University of Minnesota. The chopping up of a cell's DNA occurs in response to damage, for example, from ultraviolet light, and appears to be a means of killing the c...

Boston University biomedical engineers win major grant for pursuit of the '$1,000 Genome'

Two Boston University biomedical engineers have won a major National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant to continue groundbreaking research aimed at reducing the cost of sequencing individual human genomes to about $1,000. Boston University Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Physics Amit Meller was among nine researchers chosen for the NIH's National Human Genome Research Inst...

Protein averts cell suicide but might contribute to cancer

Scientists have discovered how an unusual protein helps a cell bypass damage when making new DNA, thereby averting the cell's self-destruction. The findings by researchers with Ohio State University 's C...